Andrea was asleep, as I was up late irrigating the lawn and field. I finished up about midnight. As I walked along the ditch bank back towards the house, I was startled to see two glowing eyes reflecting light from my head lamp. "Oh," I thought, it's just a cat. But I soon realized it was not just a cat. This is what I saw:
That's right. Standing about 5 feet away on the grass below the ditch bank where I stood was a skunk, a polecat, a Mephitis mephitis. And he was mad. His tail was up in the air and he hissed angrily, ready to dispense his unique brand of stinky vengeance.
I froze. "What do I do?" I thought. As my life flashed before my eyes, I contemplated turning and running, or jumping in the ditch, or yelling at it to scare it off, but in my mind each alternative seemed equally likely to end up in me sleeping outside for the next month. So I just froze, eyes locked on the business end of this hissing nightmare.
Miraculously, a few seconds later the skunk lowered his guard and hightailed it across the yard into the darkness. My heart still pounded as I finished closing the head gates and went in to go to bed.
I'm grateful we live where we do, away from the city (really away from what most people would actually consider any sort of a real city) and a stone's throw from nature. But I'm also very grateful to have dodged nature's bullet last night.
3 comments:
One side of me (the humane side) is glad it didn't get you. The other side of me is kind of sad. You could have joined dad in the skunked club. Then I would of had a dad AND a brother who'd been sprayed by a skunk in their life times. Congrats on the narrow escape!
how in the WORLD did you take this picture? I didn't check. Did you steal it off the internet? I'm with Rachel. It woulda been kinda cool (for the rest of us, who don't have to smell you every day) if you'd been skunked.
It's not the actual skunk. I stole it off the internet. It's a dramatization, I guess, "Unsolved Mysteries"-style.
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